Thursday, March 7, 2013

Michael Penn: MP4: Days Since A Lost Time Accident

Michael Penn’s fourth album actually came out pretty
quickly, all things considered.It was
out in early 2000, which meant it took less than three years to write and
record.

I’m not sure what sped up the process.

Michael Penn is listed as the producer of most of the album,
outside of the song Lucky One, which leads me to believe that this should be
the most Michael-Penn-iest album of them all.All the hooks and jangling and pop of the first two albums should be on
display here.

And yet…

Things had changed for me again by the time MP4 hit
shelves.I had been married for about
half of a year, had graduated from college and gotten my first “real” job.

This was the first album I was really afraid to revisit, not
because I thought it was bad, but because I had almost no memory of it.And while bad is bad, unmemorable is
sometimes worse, as it indicates that there’s nothing to latch onto and no
reason to care.Bad can be amusing.Forgettable just leaves you wondering why you
bother.

As I’ve said before, Penn’s first two albums are branded on
me now.I can pick them up and sing
large chunks of them.Even Resigned I
remembered pretty well, though there were and are some holes.

Far, far too much of MP4 was a total mystery to me when it
put it in the CD player for the first time in several years.

There’s a question there, and that question is: What
changed?Was it Michael?Was it me?

I suspect a combination of both.

Out of school and married, my music listening time often
wasn’t my own.I could listen in my car,
but my drive to work was less than ten minutes long each way.And I didn’t do a lot of in-house music
listening, because now it wasn’t just me in the house, it was me and my wife,
and she didn’t always dig the same stuff I did.

Her reaction to Michael Penn was generally one of
“tolerance.”

I don’t always expect greatness from an album, but what I do
expect that I’ll get at least one great song.It’s like getting through the bread of a sandwich and hitting that first
real gush of jelly.Everything up to
then was okay, but the fruity sweetness makes it just that much better.

But I never really found that gushy sweetness I was looking
for.

MP4 starts off with a boom and a crash and a strum and a
hyperactive, zippy piano part.The
rhythm is trippy and awkward, and it reminds me a bit of the drum part in
Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way, where you can never quite find the beat.

It’s produced within an inch of its life.This isn’t the worst thing, but if I
understand what’s going on, the reason the song sounds that way is because it
was supposed to be some kind of hit single.Only it didn’t really sound like a hit single.

Granted, neither did No Myth, but… well, No Myth was kind of
a boot-stomping acoustic love song.It
was surprising and different, yes, but it was also very singable.

Lucky One, on the other hand?Coming back to it all these years ago, I love
all the fiddly bits, the sudden shifts, and even the sudden odd slowdown at the
end where it goes into a minor key and turns into a totally different song.

But it wasn’t a single. It wasn’t a return.It wasn’t a big hit record.It didn’t chart at all, from what I can tell.

And there were no other singles after that.

As I sat listening to MP4 for the first time in years, I was
reminded of the last time I went to the beach with my kid.We dug a hole and sat in it as the waves
lapped warm water against us.It was
pleasant, but over time our hole started to vanish and we had to dig it again
to get the same experience.

As I sit here typing this now, and glancing at the song list
for MP4, my head feels like that pit of sand.

What I’m trying to explain is, the hole erased itself even
as I sat there, and even as I sat listening to the songs on MP4, my brain was
already forgetting the previous tune.As
I listened, I thought, “This is nice.I
kind of remember it now.”

But 36 hours later, even looking at song titles, I can
barely extract mental snippets of some of the songs.

Obviously, I recall Lucky One, and the album closer Bucket
Brigade has a nice piano riff that slips into a melody that is at least
memorable enough for me to recall it now.

But most of the rest of the songs come to me in five or ten
second snippets of chorus, if they come at all.The lyrical content is largely an empty canvas on my grey matter.The song Trampoline has a fun chorus, but what
is the song about, and how does the verse go?

I can’t recall.

There are relationships you get into with musical artists
that become confusing over time.I have
a deep abiding love of Prince, but a few years ago I realized I was buying his
new records not because I desperately needed to hear them, but because I
thought there must be something great buried in them that I wasn’t hearing.

Eventually, I realized that I simply didn’t care all that
much what he put out.There were good
songs on his releases, but no great ones.

Am I comparing MP4 to Prince’s later-period output?I am, but MP4 looks better by
comparison.I may not remember a lot of
MP4, but I do remember some of it.Whereas I just pulled up the song list for the last Prince album I
bought, and over 80 minutes of music is largely a blank hole in my head.

Over the next decade, Michael produced only one album of new
material, and mostly turned to film and TV music composition.One could argue that if he’s busy, he might
have time for both, but I wonder if perhaps his interest has waned.

It’s difficult to be a working musician, much less a rock
star, and I wonder if Michael never really wanted to be one.His wife Aimee Mann is all over Facebook,
posting and saying wonderful things about her fans and her shows.

Michael, on the other hand, I never see.His web site is just about bare.I only found out he had a song on the Girls
TV show soundtrack because I went looking for him on Amazon and stumbled across
it.

His last real album release was in 2005, with a reissue in
2007 and a “collection” album released in 2007 as well.

Which is to say, in the last 12 years he’s released one new
album.While Aimee has released five.

Maybe he just wants to fade into the background.Maybe soundtracks scratch his writing itch.

Or maybe he figured he gave the rock star thing a shot, and
he doesn’t want the tours and the running around and the various trappings that
go with being at least semi-famous.

I dunno.I’ll take
another swipe on this train of thought when I re-check out his last couple of
releases.

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Joshua Grover-David Patterson is a freelance writer, screenwriter, and blogger. His articles on pop culture, film and the Internet have appeared in The Post-Crescent, Bull magazine, delight! magazine and Film Threat. Patterson’s films have won 13 awards and appeared in 29 film festivals all over the world, including in Japan, Australia, Hungary, Norway, the UK, and throughout the United States. Patterson resides in Wisconsin with his wife and their daughter.